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In a shocking event of cyber crime, it is revealed that Rs. 72 million worth of E-Tickets were stolen by various individuals and Air Travel Agents through Pakistan International Airline (PIA) website, reported Dunya Newspaper.

Report said that tickets were stolen for more than a year and it was only recently that PIA administration found out the flaw in their website that lead to free reservation of 5757 air travel tickets for all sorts of destinations across the globe.

Government officials confirmed the incident and said that details of the cyber crime will be presented during on-going session of National Assembly.

It merits mentioning here that PIA had started offering E-Ticketing service through its websites for over two years ago but had halted the service recently after finding out about the scandal.

According to report, these tickets were reserved through PIA websites and were re-sold to end-users who travelled on the stolen tickets without getting caught by PIA administration.

Report claims that PIA website had essential security loopholes that lead the Air Travel Agents to freely reserve E-Tickets.

Interestingly, the security loophole was misused by agents for over a year and no-one from PIA was able to track it.

A cyber security expert, while explaining the possibilities to ProPakistani, said that it is likely that PIA administration was involved in the crime. He opined that Travel Agents are usually not that tech-savvy and may not have found the bug without external help.

PIA said that it is making efforts to recover the money and some Rs. 10 milion were already recovered.

This news is not being covered by any other media outlet so far (which is strange and hence isn’t that convincing) plus we don’t have any official confirmation from ministry of information technology or from PTA as of now.

According to Pakistan Today, during hearing a petition requesting a permanent ban on Facebook for hosting competition featuring blasphemous caricatures, Lahore High Court ordered the government to make sure that Facebook is blocked in Pakistan and to submit a compliance report by October 6, 2011.

The judge, however, made it clear that no search engine including Google would be blocked, reported the paper.

It maybe recalled that Facebook got banned in Pakistan last year for hosting Draw Mohammad Day and for not removing blasphemous pages from it’s server.

This fresh petition in Lahore High Court is filed by Muhammad & Ahmad, a public interest litigation firm, through chairman Muhammad Azhar Siddique advocate praying for a permanent ban on access to Facebook for hosting a fresh blasphemous caricature drawing contest world over under a title “2nd Annual Draw Muhammad Day on May 20, 2011″.

Facebook is a social network and users from around the world are free to post anything, however, it content is moderated based on Facebook terms which state:

You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.

Facebook became controversial and was condemned for not removing Draw Mohammad Day page from it’s server despite it was reported (as abuse) by hundreds of thousands of Muslim users. While on other hands Facebook tends to remove any anti-Jews or Anti-Israel page in only few minutes.

Update:

We just got confirmation from PTA officials that they have not received any such order, at least as of now, for Facebook blockade.

This is a developing story and may get updated when and if we get any further information on this

On Friday, the board of directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees the Internet’s naming system, approved the creation of a red-light district online for pornographic websites. It follows a decade-long battle over such a name.

The uproar over the idea has brought together unlikely bedfellows.

Religious groups argue that giving adult websites their own corner of the Internet legitimizes the content.

Pornographers worry it will ghettoize their sites. Although it’s meant to be voluntary, they fear governments could try to mandate the domain’s use, so that pornographic content is more easily blocked.

Diane Duke, executive director of the adult entertainment industry’s Free Speech Coalition, said in a statement that ICANN has “disregarded overwhelming outpouring of opposition from the adult entertainment industry — the supposed sponsorship community” and dismissed the “interests of free speech on the Internet.”

Supporters have maintained that approving the domain is in keeping with the principle of openness that has fueled the Internet’s growth.

While the idea of “.xxx” has provoked a philosophical debate, for the U.S. company that submitted the application for the domain, the issue is little more than a matter of dollars and cents.

ICM Registry and its CEO, Stuart Lawley, who has led the fight for ICANN’s approval of “.xxx,” stand to profit handsomely from the rollout of “.xxx” websites — because he will be in charge of collecting fees for the use of the new domains.

Lawley plans to charge registrars $60 per year for the domain names. He estimates that he could sell as many as 500,000 by the time he rolls them out this summer.

“This was always going to be a very lucrative arrangement,” he said in an interview Friday.

Lawley’s prices have been a critical issue for opponents to his plan, since domain names typically sell for a fraction of what Lawley plans to charge. They often sell for $10 or less.

ICANN had repeatedly rejected Lawley’s application since 2000, under pressure from Christian groups and governments unhappy with the spread of online porn. Lawley has pitched the suffix as a way for parents to more easily block access to the content. He argues it will be easier for Web filtering software to block “.xxx” sites since they are clearly labeled as porn

LONDON: Facebook, which was first blamed for encouraging illicit encounters, is being increasingly cited as an evidence while seeking divorce.

Family lawyers have revealed that the problem has become so great that almost every divorce they have dealt with in the past year has involved the website.

One expert said she had dealt with 30 cases in the last nine months and Facebook had been implicated in them all.

Whilst another online law company said one in five of their divorce petitions in the past year contain references to Facebook.

Emma Patel, the head of family law at Hart Scales & Hodges Solicitors, said the site acted like a “virtual third party” in splits.

“Facebook is being blamed for an increasing number of marital breakdowns, and it is quite remarkable that all the petitions that I have seen here since May have cited Facebook one way or another,” she said.

“Its huge popularity as well as the lure of sites like Second Life, Illicit Encounters and Friends Reunited are tempting couples to cheat on each other.

“Suspicious spouses have used these to spy and find evidence of flirting and even affairs, which have then led to break-ups.”

She said that many of divorces came after partners found “flirty messages” on the Facebook wall of their partner – and also “inappropriate suggestive chats” which spouse’s can see.

The lawyer said that she urged all clients to “stay off” Facebook during divorce proceedings – as it could throw a spanner in the works of it going smoothly – especially if they post photos of new lovers.

She said: “They feel compelled to share their feelings online, and, in some cases, they not only express their stress, but also make inflammatory accusations against their partner.

“Divorce is a highly-charged and emotional time, but it is vital not to turn the situation into a public slagging match, played out for everyone to see online.

“The situation has deteriorated so badly that we advise feuding couples to avoid these sites until their divorces are settled.”

The family law specialist based in Dorking, Surrey, said that one divorcing couple’s rows on Facebook got so bad one party was charged with malicious communication after the police got involved.

James Wrigley, 34, of Hackney, east London, said: “My girlfriend left me after finding out I had been sending Facebook messages to a girl at work.

“She got my password and read the messages and that was the end of that – four years together down the drain, but at least we hadn’t got married.”

Other examples include Marianna Gini, 32, a housing support worker and mother-of-one who was married for six years before she found out through Facebook that her husband Robert, 34, was having an affair.

Sarah Picket, 36, a housewife from Oldham and mother-of-three was married to taxi driver Chris, also 36, for eight years, until her Facebook flirtations led to their split.

She did not have an affair but her husband found flirtatious messages and the relationship ended in acrimony and jealousy.

In 2009, a 28-year- old woman, from Newquay in Cornwall, ended her marriage after discovering her husband had been having a virtual affair in cyberspace with someone he had never met.

Amy Taylor split from David Pollard after discovering he was sleeping with an escort in the game Second Life, a virtual world where players reinvent themselves.

Lauren Booth, the sister-in-law of Tony Blair, ended up causing problems in her relationship when in a fit of pique she changed the status on her Facebook profile from married to single.

Miss Booth, who is half-sister of Cherie Blair, said it was a rash decision which she changed back but not before it upset her husband.

A spokesman for Facebook said it was “tosh” that Facebook could ruin a relationship.

“It is like blaming your mobile phone or your emails,” he said.

“Does being on Facebook force you to do something – absolutely not I would say.”